page_title: Walkie-talkie
section_title: Specialized uses
hierarchical_section_title: Walkie-talkie / Specialized uses
caption_attribution_description: U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) Grain inspection employees take samples of grain from freight cars for testing in New Orleans, Louisiana on October 7, 1976. A USDA AMS grain inspector reports to cargo authorities on the progress of the inspection. Photo courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration. USDA inspector holds RCA TacTec walkie-talkie.
context_page_description: A walkie-talkie, more formally known as a handheld transceiver, is a hand-held, portable, two-way radio transceiver. Its development during the Second World War has been variously credited to Donald Hings, radio engineer Alfred J. Gross, Henryk Magnuski and engineering teams at Motorola. First used for infantry, similar designs were created for field artillery and tank units, and after the war, walkie-talkies spread to public safety and eventually commercial and jobsite work.
  Typical walkie-talkies resemble a telephone handset, with a speaker built into one end and a microphone in the other and an antenna mounted on the top of the unit. They are held up to the face to talk. A walkie-talkie is a half-duplex communication device. Multiple walkie-talkies use a single radio channel, and only one radio on the channel can transmit at a time, although any number can listen. The transceiver is normally in receive mode; when the user wants to talk they must press a "push-to-talk" button that turns off the receiver and turns on the transmitter. Smaller versions of this device are also very popular among young children.
context_section_description: In addition to land mobile use, waterproof walkie talkie designs are also used for marine VHF and aviation communications, especially on smaller boats and ultralight aircraft where mounting a fixed radio might be impractical or expensive. Often such units will have switches to provide quick access to emergency and information channels.
  Intrinsically safe walkie-talkies are often required in heavy industrial settings where the radio may be used around flammable vapors.  This designation means that the knobs and switches in the radio are engineered to avoid producing sparks as they are operated.
caption: A USDA grain inspector with RCA TacTec walkie-talkie, New Orleans, 1976
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